A Little Polish, Elegance, Refinement…

My “best-half” announced that she had purchased two tickets for the one night stand of the touring Russian State Ballet of Siberia. This performance was held last Thursday, May 13th, 8:30 pm, in Vallarta’s beautiful new performing arts venue Teatro Vallarta. For you “uninformed” the Teatro Vallarta is located in El Centro at Uruguay 184, just south of LEY’S grocery store. The Russian State Ballet of Siberia is a classical ballet company based at the Krasnoyarsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, and was founded in 1978. After touring Europe and the UK for the past 3 years, Vallarta was added to their touring schedule for this season.


Refraining from asking my spouse who was going with her (I’m finally learning) we arrived 30 minutes early and found most of the expats that are still in residence mingling sociably on the new terrace which now replaces the street that fronted the theater. Being large fans of air-conditioning we entered the theater premises and found our way to our assigned seats. Quickly assessing the environment I discovered that waiters were running up and down the aisles taking orders for refreschas and or cocktails. Taking advantage of this we ordered and received two large and perfectly prepared gin tonics (one each) and settled in for people watching and eventually the performance. The affair was sold out two evenings before the performance and everybody important, trying to be important, or wanting to feel important was in attendance. Some tickets were being scalped outside by those who had changed their mind and one of our friends was able to get a single boleto at the last moment (how about that J.H.).


The theater is beautiful and well appointed and the seats are comfortable, have adequate leg room and are tiered so that the person in front does not block your view forward and to the side. However, typically some minor flaws always exist. One such are the steps, leading immediately up from the front of the stage aisle towards the noise-bleed seats. The 4th steps’ riser was at least ¾ inch higher than those before or after, and typically consistent with the new front-to-rear rise theaters there were no hand rails. Conservatively more than 65% of all guests on our side stumbled on that mismatched riser. Fortunately, no one fell or was hurt; however, the facial expressions ran the gambit of human emotion from “what the… to abject fear/horror. Great pre-performance entertainment - we even quietly placed bets on second and third encores.


The only printed program guides that we found (and very few of them) were in Spanish so most of us who are still handicapped in that communication skill were left to our own interpretation of the various pieces being performed. However, the evening was exciting, the music, performers and theater wonderful, and I’m looking forward to next seasons venue.